A strange, devoted artist
By rosslaird on June 18, 2004 - 11:09am
Next time you’re walking in the downtown area — Commercial Drive, the West End, Howe Street — look for castaway slips of paper, cardboard. or stickers that say "repent sinner" on them. No one knows who produces these, but some strange soul devotes countless hours to making thousands of individualized slips with identical messages. I have heard that as many as a hundred may appear along a single block. And I have heard, but cannot confirm, that sometimes the message is scrawled in graffiti on sidewalks and buildings. Who does this?
I imagine a man, late fifties, living alone in a small walkup apartment. He doesn’t sleep well, has few acquaintances, and has spent some time in hospitals. At night, when the city sleeps (as someone once said), he goes to work: spending the time in the devotions of his faith, meditating, repeating, inscribing.
Then he goes out, early, around 5am. Before the street cleaners start up on Robson. Sometimes he sees the Sun trucks delivering their bundles, and once he saw a man in Oppenheimer park with a knife in his throat. He sees many more things, but he tells no one about them. Instead, he walks.
And he delivers his tiny messages, not knowing how people will respond to them. Perhaps he doesn't care about this. He walks, and scatters, and is gone again.
